“Don’t, Maureen,” Hetty said earnestly. “Don’t say that. Don’t say it isn’t for the likes of us!”
Hetty’s grandmother smiled at the seriousness of her grand-daughter. “Hetty is remembering,” she said, “the time the Queen stopped at our country cottage.”
“Were you there?” The girls all looked at Hetty.
“No, it was before she was born,” the bright-eyed old lady went on. “It was back in the days of the good Queen Victoria before people drove around in gasoline buggies.” She stopped as though she had finished, but Nan saw a twinkle in her eye.
“Please go on,” she begged. “Please tell us all about it.”
“Now, Grandmother,” Hetty laughed, “you know you want to.”
The old lady ruffled her grand-daughter’s hair playfully, as she continued, “We were sitting in the kitchen, my mother and I. She, like the model housewife she was, God bless her soul, was scouring pots and pans and giving me a few instructions on the proper behavior of a young lady.
“‘Mind what I say about your curiosity,’ she was telling me, when a crash outside interrupted. She dropped everything, making such a clatter as I’ve never heard since and nearly fell over me in her anxiety to get to the window.
“‘Glory be!’ I heard her exclaim and ran after her. There, in front of the house a big coach had broken down. Two coachmen had climbed down from their high seats and were helping three ladies out the door and up the path to our house.
“My mother whisked off her blue checked apron, smoothed down her hair and opened the door. I stood back—afrighted, as the three grand ladies came into the front parlor. Then I disappeared back into the kitchen. Mother made tea and gave them shortbread and was so a-flutter herself that she broke one of her company dishes.